


Welcome Home

by soft_thrills



Category: The X-Files
Genre: AU where Scully isn't stung and goes to Nevada, Movie: The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:55:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25851706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soft_thrills/pseuds/soft_thrills
Summary: Scully is never stung by the bee and takes the transfer to Utah. A year later, she returns home to stake her claim on The X-Files, and on Mulder.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 2
Kudos: 50





	Welcome Home

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! You may have read this before on Tumblr. That's where all my fic has lived thus far... but over the next few days, or knowing me, weeks, I'm attempting to add them over here, too. Sorry to spam you with my work!

_“no matter where you sleep tonight_

_or how far you run_

_oh, she’s the one”_

_-bruce springsteen, “she’s the one”_

*

In the hallway, he waited for her to come to her senses. When it was clear she wouldn’t, he waited for something to interrupt them – to interrupt her, to stop her from leaving. When that didn’t happen, he kissed her. And she kissed him back, soft and sweet and sad.

And then, Dana Scully repeated herself: “I gotta go.”

He wanted to say: “I love you.” But he was afraid she’d think he was only saying it to keep her here.

“Go,” he said, not a command, but more as a question, like he’d never heard the word before, like he couldn’t understand, because, well, he couldn’t.

But she went. He watched as she walked down the hallway. She didn’t glance back in his direction. A week later, she was on the other side of their big, mysterious, malevolent country.

*

He found cases that took him to Utah. She found reasons not to see him. She just had to do this autopsy hours away from Salt Lake City. She was visiting her mom that week, how unlucky. She was in San Diego with her brother.

Diana tried to join him on the X-Files. He found reasons not to let her. Diana tried to join him in bed, too. Sometimes, he ran out of reasons not to let her.

A year went by. Then, after a basketball game at the gym, he pulled his cellphone out of the locker to see that she’d left him a voicemail.

“Um, hi, Mulder, it’s me. I mean, it’s Scully. I… I’m in DC. I wanted to see if you can meet for a drink tonight. Sorry for the short notice – no pressure, if you have plans, or… I’d love to see you. Ok. Bye.”

He had felt fine after the basketball game. But suddenly, he was winded.

*

He asked her to come to a bar near his apartment. Testing her, maybe. Wishful thinking, maybe. But she said yes.

He got there early, with a plan to nurse a beer and get a booth with a view of the door and wait for her. But as he walked in the door he remembered his partner was a detail-oriented overachiever and she, somehow, had managed to arrive even earlier than he had, despite him living four minutes away from this bar.

There were two beers on the table in front of her.

“Hey,” she said, simply, like the last year never happened. “First round is on me.”

*

She looked the same, with more freckles, probably from the Utah sun. She doesn’t look a year older. Her hair is a little bit longer than it was when he put his hand at the base of her neck and kissed her in the hallway. Maybe an inch. She was dressed like she’s been at work, even though it was a Saturday.

“So, Agent Scully, master pathologist of the western desert, what brings you back to the swamp?”

“Officially? I am seeking a transfer back to DC, and my chances look pretty good now that the fallout from the bombing has died down.”

His heart thudded in his chest.

“Unofficially?” he asked, taking her bait.

“Unofficially,” she paused, took a sip, the kind of sip you take when you’re going to admit something. “Unofficially, I missed you, Mulder.”

He grinned.

“I missed you, too.”

*

They had another beer. And another. A shot of tequila. It was Saturday, what was the harm. Diana called him four times. He didn’t answer. Scully didn’t pry.

“Do you wanna go back to my place?” he asked, determined this time to say the things he wanted to, whatever she thought of them.

“Is it still as messy as a frat house?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Then yes,” she replied.

*

It was not frat-house messy, it was lonely-FBI-agent messy, but he didn’t want to argue.

Which is funny, because within five minutes of crossing his threshold, they were arguing.

“So why come back now, Scully? Something happen in Utah?”

“No,” she said, nursing a beer he had pulled out of the fridge. “I never wanted to leave, Mulder. I was ordered to. I saw my first opportunity to come back and I’m taking it.”

That’s a great answer, he thought to himself, except for it not making sense. They were sitting on the couch, and the television was playing Plan Nine from Outerspace on mute.

“It seemed like you wanted to leave,” he said, unable to let it go, to not dissect what the fuck had happened here, which really is supposed to be the pathologist’s job.

“I wanted to remain gainfully employed and in possession of my service weapon, that much is true.”

“You didn’t say goodbye. You wouldn’t see me when I was out west. You acted like — like it was nothing, no big deal, to leave.”

“Mulder —”

“Why didn’t you fight for it, Scully? If you didn’t want to go.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” she said, and that’s where things went south.

“You’re right, I wouldn’t. Because I wouldn’t have left the X-Files. I wouldn’t have left you.”

Her eyes grew wide and it took him a couple seconds to realize it was anger he saw in them.

“Mulder, maybe you wouldn’t have left the X-Files, but leaving me was practically a hobby for you,” she said, and he could tell there was more than just a year’s worth of anger behind the words, that this was something she’d been angry about even before that Dallas office building had been blown to bits.

“I don’t understand —”

“I meant what I told you in the hallway, Mulder — that I’d been holding you back. But I meant it because your behavior had led me to believe it, to believe that you didn’t need me. And maybe it hit me harder when I realized I wasn’t your first partner on the X-Files — but that I was the first that wasn’t always on your side. And it made me wonder if that’s why sometimes I’d get left behind, or be out of the loop, or feel like no matter what I gave up, you didn’t see me as having an equal stake in our work.”

“Scully, I meant what I told you — I did need you. I do need you. You are on my side,” he insisted.

She ignored that point, working her way back around to his last one.

“You’re right, Mulder, that I didn’t fight it after the transfer came down. But the truth is, when the time came, you didn’t fight for me. How long can you fight to be somewhere you’re not sure you’re wanted?”

Want. Want. What does he want? He wants the same thing he wanted in that hallway.

“I wanted you Scully. Then. And I want you now.”

“You don’t have to do this. I’ve already decided to come back to our work, because I owe it to myself and what I’ve lost—”

“I’m not talking about work, Scully,” he said, voice low and deliberate. “Don’t you remember what happened in that hallway? Because I replay it every damn day.”

She nodded.

“What about Diana?” she asked.

“She’s not on The X-Files.”

“I’m not talking about work,” she parroted his line back. “She’s got a toiletry bag in your bathroom. Her initials are monogrammed on it.”

His Scully, noticing everything, taking her little notes.

“It’s nothing. It’s over. It was over the minute I got your voicemail.”

He could tell she was thinking, deciding, but he suspected she had made her decision when she called him — when she made sure her hair was perfect and her neckline plunging and her lipstick routinely and carefully reapplied all night. She came back to claim more than just her job.

She was literally wringing her hands, restless, staring down at them. Finally she turned him, and despite her earlier anger, what he saw in that moment was wide-open vulnerability.

“How do I know that you’re telling me the truth?”

Before he even knew what he was doing, he had closed the small distance between them and kissed her. Not like the hallway. A kiss to leave no room for doubt. A hand against her delicate cheek, the other wrapped in the soft hair at the base of her neck. Not a goodbye. A beginning.

“Does that feel like a lie, Scully?”

She looked shocked, thrilled, wearing an open-mouthed smile that reminded him of their first case, when she’d laughed at him in the pouring rain.

“I want to believe,” she quipped.

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” he said, good naturedly, and the sound of her laughter filled the few seconds before their mouths connected again.

*

He scooped her into his arms and carried her toward his bedroom.

“I always thought it would be on the couch,” she said.

“Do you want me to turn around?”

“I want you to fuck me. The specifics are not particularly important,” she said.

“Jesus Christ, Scully,” he said as he tossed her onto his bed.

“No point in pretending otherwise, Mulder. We’ve pretended long enough.”

He stared, slack-jawed, as she shucked off her jeans. He’d imagined sex with Scully many times, many ways, and he had not expected her to be shy. He had seen this woman grab criminals by the collar, wring the truth out of them. Still, he was struck by her boldness, felt cause to match her bravado.

“I spent every day in that basement office pretending, Scully. Pretending I didn’t want to bend your perfect little ass over my desk–”

“By the way, you’re getting me a desk,” she cut in.

“What did I tell you about shutting the fuck up?” he asked.

She grinned. “Make me.”

So he kissed her again. He felt her perfect, capable little hands in his hair. He reached under her lithe body and gripped her ass, the one he had just been talking about.

He broke away from her only to pull his shirt over his head. She used the time to take hers off, and there she was, in just her bra and her underwear. Her fingers nimbly unfastened his button fly, then gripped the denim and his boxer briefs at once and pulled them down, down, down, until he was naked before her.

Mulder had never felt so desired as he did in that moment, watching Scully as her eyes raked over every inch of his body.

“My turn to see you,” he said.

He unhooked her bra and pulled it away, slid her panties down, fingernails scratching gently along her legs.

And there they were, naked, in his bed. And as usual, they started talking over each other.

“Can I touch you–”

“Mulder, touch me before I shoot you.”

He gripped her breasts, kissed her clavicle. She arched up into him. His fingers traveled lower, lower, dared to dip between her legs, where she was so wet and so soft and so warm. Scully, his Scully. A day ago, he thought he might never see her again. Now, she was in his bed.

“I’m sorry I ever let you think I didn’t want you, Scully.”

“Show me,” she said. “Show me that you do.”

He slid inside her then, one thrust, and she cried out, and so did he.

They stared at one another, a little in awe. Happy. After all that had happened, despite all that would happen in the future, in that moment they were just happy.

“I’m really glad you came home, Scully,” he said.

“Me too.”


End file.
